Roomies Read Free

to the mother ship.”
    “So you say.” Justine gets up and grabs her board.
    Morgan gets up, too. “Coming in?”
    I haven’t surfed much so far this season—there’s no surfing during peak beach hours, which end up generally being when I’m free. And I’m not even sure I’m going to try to surf out in California, though my friends are all convinced that that is secretly part of the whole point of my going west. Bigger waves.
    “In a minute,” I say, and they both turn and walk off toward the boys—their boyfriends and mine; Justine, much to my chagrin, likes to call us the six-pack. Then I pick up my phone and read the e-mail again, trying to decide if it really is sort of rude (like I actually thought there were cable cars on her street?) or just straightforward. I’m not sure. But I feel dumb for having told her that stuff about my dad. Justine always says she loves that I wear my heart on my sleeve, but I’ve been thinking it wouldn’t be a bad idea to put on a few layers when I leave for school. I guess I thought it’d be easier to get some of the weird stuff out over e-mail. That way, when this Lauren person and I settle in for our first night sharing a room and I say, “Oh, my dad’s gay”—when I’m forced to tell the whole story, like I inevitablywill be—maybe she’ll be a little bit prepared. I could do without the “no ways” and weirdly sympathetic “really?s” followed by those “not that there’s anything wrong with its.”
    I honestly don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.
    The wrong thing, let’s face it, was abandoning me.
    I hit Reply and think for a minute about how to respond—whether to even bother—while watching Alex ride a pretty big wave for a good long while. I’m going to miss him and his wild salty hair and goofy laugh, but things have been tense lately so I’m not sure how much.
    Lauren, I type. And then I go back to the subject heading and delete the Roomie! bit—leaving only the re: and the Hi —because it seems dumb now. We’re clearly not going to be e-mail buds.
    Mini-fridge it is , I type, but what else is there to say? Forgive me for blabbing about my dad? Would it kill you to ask a question, maybe get a little e-mail volley going? Do you eat Rice-A-Roni, “The San Francisco Treat,” like, every night?
    I take a deep breath and write, I’ll see you in August! , then delete the exclamation mark and then put it back and delete it again a few times. I sign it Elizabeth .
    “EB!” Alex is standing at the water’s edge. He cups a hand to his mouth when he yells, “Come on in!” and for a second, I close my eyes against the sun and see my mother in a black bandeau suit and me as a young girl in a polka-dot bikini—right here on the same beach—and we are happy and playing in the surf and then busy making sand castles and forts and then, later, knocking down those castles and forts and flying kites in the shapes of mermaids and bats and dragons.
    That was all when she was happy.
    That was all before.
    I get up and grab my board and set out in Alex’s direction, suddenly very much hoping I didn’t send the exclamation mark but feeling pretty sure I did. A wave crashes behind Alex, right at his ankles, and he gets thrown off-balance and has to recover. I think, I feel like that most of the time , and when I reach him, I decide I’ll kiss him—right there on the beach with anyone watching who wants to—and see if it steadies me.

THURSDAY, JUNE 27
    SAN FRANCISCO
    I’m breaking down cardboard boxes behind the Financial District deli where I work, imagining a future job for myself that doesn’t involve mustard or mixing up five gallons of tuna salad at a time. Of course there’s my other job—filing and data entry for an insurance company—but it’s not much of an improvement, taking into account paper cuts and keyboard cramp.
    I’d like to be in a lab. Sterile, quiet, isolated. Me in a white coat, hair in a bun, sporting some cool